According to a change log posted by Microsoft, Tuesday's update touched all four applications included in the preview: Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word.

Word, for example, received a performance boost in document scrolling -- the preview of the word processor was previously sluggish, even on a fast MacBook Pro -- and support for the Windows' version's most popular keyboard shortcuts, while Excel's update added the "Solver" feature, a tool found in the Windows edition that finds optimal solutions for common number-crunching problems.

Outlook, on the other hand, was updated to improve connections to enterprise Exchange accounts and got the "Propose New Time" meeting-making tool, also taken from the Windows version of the email client.

The Office 2016 updates were the typical Microsoft massive downloads, one each for Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, ranging in size from 335MB to 775MB.

To manually trigger the updates, users can select "Check For Updates" from the "Help" menu of any of the four Office 2016 applications.

Microsoft has not yet narrowed the release window for Office 2016 for Mac from its original "second half of 2015" timeline.

Microsoft on Tuesday issued updates to each of the four applications in the Office 2016 for Mac preview.

This story, "Microsoft refreshes Mac Office 2016" was originally published by
Computerworld.